The College Fix

Colleges really don’t want to waste time and money on students if they end up being scrubs and drop out or perform poorly.

That’s why they’re using “big data” to cull through all your digital footprints and decide whether you’ll measure up as a student.

Apparently a measure of success for Ithaca College students is how savvy they are with social media, according to The Hechinger Report:

Ithaca has been quietly collecting student social media data since 2007, when it launched a Facebook-like website for applicants called IC PEERS. The website gives applicants a chance to connect with Ithaca faculty as well as each other.

Using an IBM statistical analysis program, Yuko Mulugetta, Ithaca’s director of enrollment planning and self-styled “in-house statistician,” studied data collected from IC PEERS to see which students employing what behaviors were most likely to enroll and stay at Ithaca — how many photos they uploaded to their profiles, for instance, and how many IC PEERS friends they made.

The idea is to learn how interested a candidate is in the college, Ithaca officials said.

As Ithaca sophomore Kelly Meehan told Hechinger, this seems to discriminate against applicants “who don’t have regular access to the Internet or aren’t inclined to use social media.”

Wichita State is also going far beyond merit in deciding whom to accept:

David Wright, chief data officer at Wichita State University, said his colleagues and counterparts talk a lot about how to get the highest yield [proportion of accepted students who enroll] at the lowest cost. At his school, Wright said, all potential students are assigned a probability, from zero to 100 percent, of whether they’ll enroll, based on factors such as sex, race, ethnicity, test scores, high school grades and whether they’re the first in their families to go to college. The university then focuses its recruiting dollars on reaching the ones most likely to attend.

So get cracking on your selfies at Ithaca, and … change your sex or race at Wichita State?

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